Africa's richest woman accused of fraud

Angola’s billionaire Isabel dos Santos (pictured)has been accused of mismanagement and embezzlement of funds.

Attorney General Helder Pitta Gros said the allegations related to her time as stewardship of state-owned oil firm Sonangol.

“Isabel dos Santos is accused of mismanagement and embezzlement of funds during her tenure at Sonangol and is thus charged in the first instance with the crimes of money laundering, influence peddling, harmful management, forgery of documents, among other economic crimes,” prosecutor general Helder Pitta Gros told a news conference on Wednesday.

The prosecutor said an international arrest warrant would be issued for Ms dos Santos and five others, who all live abroad, if they did not present themselves.

“At the moment, the concern is to notify and get them to voluntarily come to face justice,” Gros said.

Ms dos Santos recently denied the corruption allegations, according to BBC.

She was appointed head of Sonangol in June 2016 by her father, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who was president at the time. She was sacked from the post in 2017 by President Joao Lourenço, her father's successor.

Isabel dos Santos was born in 1973, she is an Angolan businesswoman, Africa's richest woman and the eldest child of Angola's former President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979 to 2017.

In 2013, according to Forbes, her net worth had exceeded $2 billion making her Africa's first female US dollar billionaire.

Forbes described how dos Santos acquired her wealth by taking stakes in companies doing business in Angola, suggesting that her wealth comes almost entirely from her family's power and connections.

In November 2015, the BBC named dos Santos as one of the 100 most influential women in the world.